International Socialists

In 1990, Lockwood Smith following pledged to resign unless student fees were abolished when he became education minister.

In 1991, with Lockwood Smith as Minister of Education, a tiered fee structure was introduced, study right was brought into being, and students were offered loans to pay for their education - at interest. For the first time, to study was equated with amassing a debt and for some (particularly women), the debt will be a lifelong one.

According to the New Zealand University Students' Association, the per EFTS funding to universities from the government has declined in real terms by 8.2%. For Polytechnics and Colleges of Education, funding has declined by 18.1% and 26.7% respectively. Universities pass these funding declines directly to students in the form of massive fee hikes. Fees have risen from $125 a year in 1989 to anywhere from $1500 to $18,000 in 1997.

These are the highest fees paid in any developed country in the world. In Scandinavia, France, Germany, and even Greece and Portugal, no fees at all are charged for the bulk of tertiary education and in the United States, where fees are quite high, there is a much more comprehensive system of financial support and scholarships than is available in New Zealand.

Student allowances are more dis-incentives than tertiary incentives. Only about 25% of students get an allowance, and how much a student gets depends on a number of seemingly unlikely factors, such as the student's age, marital status, income, and - for students under the age of 25 - even the income of parents is taken into account. The allowance does not take into consideration such factors as the childcare needs of student parents or the needs of students with disabilities. The unemployment benefit is much more simply decided; it is based entirely upon individual income and that's all.

Lockwood's promise regarding the abolition of tertiary fees finds an echo in the 1996 New Zealand First/ National Party coalition document which states, in regard to the allowances system:

The Government will work, within its first term of office, towards a universal system of living allowances for tertiary students as part of a comprehensive system of youth income support that gives comparability between unemployed job seekers and students.

Another empty promise?

By far the most crippling component of student economic hardship is the Government Student Loans Scheme. In 1997, students owe $2 Billion in student loans. By the turn of the century, it is likely that this amount will exceed even the National Debt. It has been said that the costs of administering the scheme are greater then any repayments made. With the threshold for loan repayments set at $14,300 many graduates find themselves struggling just to keep up with payments on the interest.

The New Zealand system is one of the only systems in the world requiring loan repayments to be made while the student is still at university, and few loans schemes contain an interest component.

The NZ University Students' Associaltion has called a series of National Weeks of Action again this year to protest against these attacks on tertiary funding. It's important to support these protests or else Bolger and his friends will be able to claim that education cuts are a "dead issue."

But we need to go much further than the student associations have so far been prepared to go. University workers - both academic and general - face the same kind of attacks on their conditions and risk redundancy in many cases. If students want to win their fight for universal tertiary access then we will have to link up with these workers and bring the universities to a grinding halt.

Whatever the vice-chancellors and other top university officials say they are not on our side - their interests lie firmly with the Business Roundtable and in making the universities elite institutions for the very rich only.

We need a fightback that unites all university students and staff against the Coalition and their friends in the Registries.